BASIL. My marriage is absolutely inevitable--for another reason. JOHN. You talk as if such things had never happened before. BASIL. Oh, I know, they happen every day. It's no business of the man's. And as for the girl, let her throw herself in the river. Let her go to the deuce, and be hanged to her. JOHN. Nonsense. She can be provided for. It only needs a little discretion--and no one will be a ha'porth the wiser, nor she a ha'porth the worse. BASIL. But it's not a matter of people knowing. It's a matter of honour. JOHN. [_Opening his eyes._] And where precisely did the honour come in when you ...? BASIL. Good heavens, I'm a man like any other. I have passions as other men have. JOHN. [_Gravely._] My dear Basil, I wouldn't venture to judge you. But I think it's rather late in the day to set up for a moralist. BASIL. D'you think I've not regretted what I did? It's easy enough afterwards to say that I should have resisted. The world would be a Sunday School if we were all as level-headed at night as we are next morning. JOHN. [_Shaking his head._] After all, it's only a very regrettable incident due to your youth and--want of innocence. BASIL. [_With vehement seriousness._] I may have acted like a cur. I don't know. I acted as I suppose every other man would. But now I have a plain duty before me, and, by God, I mean to do it. JOHN. Don't you realise that you've only one life and that mistakes are irreparable? People play with life as if it were a game of chess in which they can try this move and that, and when they get into a muddle, sweep the board clear and begin again. BASIL. But life is a game of chess in which one is always beaten. Death sits on the other side of the board, and for every move he has a counter-move. And for all your deep-laid schemes he has a parry. JOHN. But if at the end Death always mates you, the fight is surely worth the fighting. Don't handicap yourself at the beginning by foolish quixotry. Life is so full. It has so much to offer, and you're throwing away almost everything that makes it worth the trouble. BASIL. [_Gravely._] Jenny would kill herself if I didn't marry her. JOHN. You don't seriously think she'd do that. People don't commit suicide so easily, you know. BASIL. You've thought of a great deal, John--you've not thought of the child. I can't let the child skulk into the world like a thief. Let him come in openly and lawfully. And let him go through the world with an honest name. Good heavens, the world's bad enough without fettering him all his life with a hideous stigma. JOHN. Oh, my dear Basil ... BASIL. [_Interrupting._] You can bring forward a thousand objections, but nothing alters the fact that, under the circumstances, there's only one way open to a man of honour. JOHN. [_Drily._] Well, it's a way that may do credit to your heart, but scarcely to your understanding. BASIL. I thought you'd see at once that I was doing the only possible thing. JOHN.